Nirad Abrol explores the character of the education that is central to the revolution in Burkina Faso.
On 2nd April, at a flag raising ceremony, Capitain Ibrahim Traoré declared the character of the ongoing revolution in Burkina Faso to be popular and progressive. This marks the first time a definition of the revolution has been provided by the leadership of the transitional government.
Many of the threads between Marxists in the Global North and revolutionary political organisations in the Global South have been cut. British, Yank and French funding to ‘civil society’ in the Global South has a depoliticising, ‘humanitarian’ effect, redirecting efforts and blocking the capabilities of anti-imperialist political organisations in the Global North to develop. The Liberation Support Movement and the GDR’s Solidarity Committee are revolutionary projects often seen as fever dreams. But for the hundreds of thousands massacred by CIA and NATO armed-and-trained death squads in Angola, Gaza and the Sahel, as Marxists in the Global North we need to act against US-led imperialism with the same force that is once again being demonstrated in by the Alliance of Sahel States (Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso).
The Thomas Sankara Centre for African Liberation and Unity is a Pan-African and Socialist library and political education center in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. It has books for children and adults that are otherwise unavailable in Ouagadougou. Its organisers are part of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and they run work-study circles which meet weekly to discuss revolutionary literature and analyse current affairs. For almost three years the centre has run a Young Pioneers program for children aged 6 – 16 to learn about Revolutionary Pan-Africanism.
Despite the road link between Niger and Burkina Faso being cut by landmines, the Thomas Sankara Centre has developed a warm relationship with the Union of Nigerien Students (USN), a Marxist students union in Niger that represents every school from a preschool to postgraduate level. Preparations are being made for the USN to open a second Thomas Sankara Centre in Niger and they have a wishlist of books which comrades anywhere in the world can order to support them. They have a head start already, with a full set of Lenin’s collected works donated by a comrade in Portugal.
Cat’s Cradle Tiger’s Eye is a Proletarian Internationalist organisation that develops pedagogy to assist those who are involved in communist, anti-imperialist and pan-African struggle. We are linked to the School of Many Questions in Chicago, and we also have members in Britain and Palestine. In January we released our first publication, Shining Jade: A Workbook for Applying Criticism and Self-criticism in Organisations. As part of the work of CCTE, a comrade visited Burkina Faso for a pedagogical exchange with the centre. Together we worked on lesson plans for the young pioneers as well as conducting teacher training sessions.
As a pedagogical organisation mostly based in the Global North, in CCTE we are familiar with applying our pedagogical techniques to situations that are non-revolutionary. But we have limited experience working in a context where education is to be provided to people so that they can form the socially conscious people of a new state. We know of examples of this type of education through exchanges with comrades in Cuba and through study of the education put into practice in revolutionary Grenada, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. We consistently find ourselves falling short of understanding the practical character of the education provided in these contexts, how a classroom was really run, what values were taught to people and how they were taught.
•YOUNG PIONEERS SALUTE•
Written by Inem Richardson, of the Thomas Sankara Centre (pictured teaching at the Centre).
The Thomas Sankara Centre has been studying the history of the Young Pioneer program in particular because we are very concerned with political education processes that centre around children (who make up 50% of Burkina Faso’s population). One of our members, Ocean Passamde Sawadogo, was a young pioneer during his childhood and he has been helping us to draw more from this history in our children’s program.
Ocean tells us many stories about growing up as a pioneer. They addressed one another with a salute which you can read below. They attended a class called ideology where they learned about the capitalist, socialist and communist modes of production. They learned about the struggles in Palestine and South Africa and the impact of imperialism in their country and in their lives. There was some focus on agroecology, and every school child planted trees as a part of their education. Trees are a big part of the Burkinabé revolution. They’re a major symbol of real material significance as Burkina Faso is impacted by desertification.
Pioneer Salute:
Person 1: Pioneer!
Person 2: Dare to fight, Know how to Win! Hello Pioneer!
1: Live a revolutionary, die a revolutionary. Arms in hand.
2: The Homeland or Death
Both: We will succeed!
See if you can find someone to practice the salute with. Did you ever salute your friends as a child? How does this salute compare to ones that you used with your friends?
•A DISCUSSION WITH OCEAN, A FORMER PIONEER•
Ocean was three years old in 1983 when he became a pioneer. He is a reggae artist who performs in public places, at concerts, and at political meetings. During the 2014 protests that removed Blaise Compaoré from power, Ocean toured the meetings happening at the different protest sites. He wrote a song in Fula with the lyrics: Si vous restez couché vous allez mourir, which translate, ‘If you stay asleep you will die’. Ocean is a trained teacher who taught for four years at primary level.
Nirad: ‘What were the kinds of things that you learnt?’
Ocean: ‘The commandment (including the pioneer salute).’ [Ocean gets up and runs through the whole thing. He introduced the salute to the centre and the Pioneers today do it the same as he did it.]
N: What was the Ideological training?
O: We were little so we were taught a simple definition of capitalism that we would be able to understand: the exploitation of man by man. We were taught the fight against apartheid is a fight against a crime against humanity.
N: Is there a link between your music and your time as a pioneer?
O: I make engaged music because I was a pioneer. If Thomas Sankara hadn’t died we would have been the future leaders of the country so it’s necessary to stay militant.
N: Who created the pioneer programme?
O: Sankara himself. The YP happened parallel to the ministry of education and because of how quickly it developed it was directly overseen by the president. The selection was done at a school level. First dynamic and revolutionary teachers would be chosen and they would be brought to Ouagadougo for training. They would then go back to their schools and choose the students for the YP programme. The programme would have become a programme for everyone if it had continued for ten more years.
N: What was the difference between the Young Pioneer programme and ordinary school?
The YP followed the school programme as normal except that we had three separate sessions on three different days — Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.
N: What are the differences in conditions for Pioneers now and back then with Sankara?
O: On the news I launched an appeal to the government to copy the actual programme at the centre and to make it widespread. There is a need to create a cadre that can form and accompany the mass. Sankara created a cadre so that all people could be organised. There were evening debates in all the neighbourhoods. The current government hasn’t yet created any organisations. The masses have the seed of Sankara in them but they are not organised. It is necessary for Burkina to catch up. Discipline: it is necessary to teach discipline. Have you heard of a revolutionary without discipline? Discipline is the base of a revolutionary.
•EXCHANGE WITH A YOUNG PIONEER•
I was in Ouagadougou, near the end of a regular online planning meeting with comrades in Chicago, when two pioneers, Aida and Samira, who had come to the centre during their lunch break from school to read, started imitating me and the big headphones I was wearing for an online meeting with other comrades. They put them on, and started asking the comrades to speak French. The notes below are from this spontaneous meeting.
What makes Inem (a comrade at the centre) special?
A+S: We learn Pan-African history from her. She explained the fight of the Palestinian people. We learnt about Cuba and wrote our own poetry about it. [They begin to recite together the poems that they have written, and are clearly proud to do it.]
What do your parents think about Pan -Africanism?
A+S: They think it’s good for their children. They ask us when we learn something not from home and we say we learnt it at the center and they think that’s good.
What do your parents / grandparents remember about Sankara?
A+S: My grandparent was a school teacher. Sankara asked him to teach in a village in the interior of the country but then Sankara got killed. Now school is expensive, but before it was free.
Does Aida want to help Nirad teach? Keep time, facilitate, teach other pioneers
A: Yes, if the other pioneers accept it. The boys wouldn’t accept it.
How would the boys react?
A: They would say it’s not interesting, because they don’t believe I know what I am saying.
Do they listen to Inem?
A+S: Yes because they believe Inem knows a lot, so they know what they are listening to is true. They would say Aida would just be repeating what Inem says. The boys are the problem.
Are there pioneers that are more sensitive, like Kevin?
Samira: No! While Aida was eating bread he took it out of her hand and walked away.
Why are the boys like that?
A+S: The boys act like that because they think they are the hot stuff, that what they say is the truth, and that’s why they can disturb the lesson.
Where do they learn it?
A+S: In the neighborhood, and then they bring it here. [Donald, a comrade at the centre, is shaking his head in the background]… He doesn’t agree because he’s a boy.
Donald: It’s more of a problem of childhood spirit. Slightly older boys, 9-10, become more independent…
Would Thomas Sankara listen to you teach?
A: Yes Sankara would listen to us teach.
If they are LEARNING about Thomas Sankara why are they not ACTING like Thomas Sankara in this way?
A: They feel they have to act more like him around adults than other kids.
Aida: Are the kids in the US like the kids here?
Lesley (in Chigago): The kids in the US are not so interested in history.
Samira: Do the kids learn about pan-africanism?
L: No kids learn about pan-africanism in the US — only the ones that we teach.
Maya: We don’t have young pioneers, we have “scouts” who are imperialist kids.
L: Most kids here have phones
Samira: If a child here has a phone at age 9-10 that means they are extremely rich and they will ruin their studies with a phone. If Aida got a phone, everyone in the neighborhood would ask who her boyfriend was who gave her that phone.
Aida: Who are these parents spoiling their children? They should know they will regret this decision, to give kids these phones. They will go to nightclubs.
On Sunday May 4th as part of the May Day weekend in Edinburgh, Cat’s Cradle is holding an event at Tollcross Community Centre from 2-5pm: ‘We are Ending Exploitation — Resistance in West Africa’. You can find more details and sign up on Instagram @catscradledundee.
